Charlotte Rogers

Project

Savage Storms in Literature of the Americas

To work on her book Savage Storms, which seeks to answer the following question: What role do tropical cyclones play in literatures and cultures of the Americas? Rogers argues that storms are a disruptive, destabilizing force in twentieth-century narratives written in English, French and Spanish. They are environmentally catastrophic, producing major changes in landscapes and ecosystems. Storms have similarly tumultuous effects on humans, rending social, familial and political fabrics. They provoke migration and create diasporas, often exacerbating inequalities and sometimes encouraging community solidarity. Savage Storms is a new research project that enters into dialogue with several of the categories established by theMellon Humanities Fellows Program: oceanic connections, diaspora, literary works and the effects of climate change lie at the heart of this project.

Biography

Charlotte Rogers is Assistant Professor of Spanish. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in Spanish from Yale University and her B.A. in Comparative Literature from Barnard College. Her area of specialty is twentieth- and twenty-first-century Latin America, with a comparative focus on representations of the tropics in literature and culture. Her first book, Jungle Fever: Exploring Madness and Medicine in Twentieth-Century Tropical Narratives was published by Vanderbilt University Press in 2012. In 2014 Professor Rogers was a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress, and in 2015 Princeton University awarded her a Library Research Grant. She teaches courses on twentieth- and twenty-first century Latin American literature and culture. Her current research project, “Mourning El Dorado in Contemporary Fiction from the Americas,” examines the resurgence of the legend of El Dorado in contemporary Latin American fiction. Before coming to UVA, Professor Rogers taught at Hamilton College and George Mason University.